Mac TB 68.x 64bit Profiles Issue

[ridgedale]

Having raised this issue some time ago (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3056990) I deliberately Ieft it for a while to see if the issue got resolved in a subsequent release. The issue however remains. Upon further research I have found the following thread on bugzilla.thunderbird.org that shows this is an issue relating to any 64-bit version of Thunderbird:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1542025

Given that under MacOS Catalina 32-bit will no longer run this is a serious issue. Effectively the changes to the way profiles are now being handled in the version 67 and later releases no profiles can be relocated. All 20 of my profiles containing multiple email accounts are unable to be accessed. When I try to customise the installs.ini and profiles.ini to point to the correct server location with a leading forward slash and relaunch Thunderbird the following error message is returned.

Profile Missing
Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.

That message is incorrect as all profiles are in the correct locations and can be accessed without any problem using TB 60.9.1 (32-bit). Upon further review of the ini files I can see the path is automatically being altered by Thunderbird upon the launch of the program by removing the path's leading forward slash effectively overriding the external path declaration and forcing the program to look for a local, non-existent path instead of the correct path to the server location, hence the error message.

Currently the only solution to continue to access all my email is to use the 32-bit 60.9.1 version of Thunderbird under MacOS Mojave.

Please can this issue be addressed to allow external profile paths to be accepted and not overridden in the latest releases of Thunderbird? This is the only software preventing the use of MacOS Catalina.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[tanstaafl]

"Currently the only solution to continue to access all my email is to use the 32-bit 60.9.1 version of Thunderbird under MacOS Mojave."

The bug report is about a problem that can be worked around using a combination of a --allow-downgrade command line argument to allow version 68 to use a profile that was not created by it plus a -p "complete_path_to_profile" command line argument that specifies the full path to the profile.

Another solution would be to just copy and paste the complete contents of your old profile into a new profile that version 68 creates. help -> troubleshooting information -> open folder will open your systems file explorer/finder at the current profile. You can use about:profiles (in help -> troubleshooting information) to get to a similar "open folder" button for all of the other profiles.

See http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14852365

Why do you have 20 profiles? Most people with multiple accounts have one profile with multiple accounts, or possibly a separate work and a personal profile.

[ridgedale]

Thanks for your reply, tanstaafi.

The bug report is about a problem that can be worked around using a combination of a --allow-downgrade command line argument to allow version 68 to use a profile that was not created by it plus a -p "complete_path_to_profile" command line argument that specifies the full path to the profile.

I've created a shell script to launch Thunderbird that includes the following launch command (both with and without the --allow-downgrade parameter - no difference):

Code: Select all

3) /Volumes/<path to>/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin --allow-downgrade -p /Volumes/<path to server>/Thunderbird/Profiles/3vav69x6.default ;;

Note: I've also tried linking to a folder on the server that only contains the Profiles folder with the same result.
The path to the program and to the profile folder are correctly entered. The profile can be accessed under TB v.60.9.1 without any problem.
When I launch the shell script I'm presented with the menu that has been created to display the available profiles to launch.
When I type the relevant number and press enter Thunderbird launches and immediately displays the Profile Manager despite the option being unchecked. Why - the shell script has already told TB what profile to launch?
If I select the entry in the Profile Manager and press the Start Thunderbird button, I get the following error message:

Profile Missing
Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.

Neither of which are true.
The only possibility is that the parameters I have entered are incorrect. Is that the case?

Another solution would be to just copy and paste the complete contents of your old profile into a new profile that version 68 creates.

As mentioned in the previous thread referred to that does not work either:

What I subsequently tried was to create a new profile directly on the NAS, but that approach also failed to display anything or display any menu options as well.
I finally tried copying the profile to a local workstation and the profile then opened without any issue.
When I copied the profile that had been opened successfully locally back to the NAS and removed the local copy, the same issue recurred.

Why do you have 20 profiles? Most people with multiple accounts have one profile with multiple accounts, or possibly a separate work and a personal profile.

To be perfectly honest it should not be necessary to ask that question. I deal with far more email (business/voluntary/personal/etc) than most people. The email within each profile needs to be kept separate. I've been using TB for well over a decade and have it recommended others. I don't profess to be an expert, but I'm far from being a noob. This is one of the very few occasions I've needed to resort to the forums to try to resolve an issue with Thunderbird.

As it stands I can launch any version of Thunderbird up to v.60.9.1 under any Mac operating system up to and including MacOS 10.14.6 (Mojave) and access all the same profiles on the NAS server without any issue. Any later version of Thunderbird appears to only work if the profile is stored locally.

If the whole purpose of the change in TB is to stop users from being able to downgrade, that should have been made absolutely clear on the download page or within the update process to allow the user the opportunity to make an appropriate decision. In any event surely an upgrade process should have been put in place to step users through how to upgrade TB depending upon users' existing profile configurations. Assuming every user is only running one or two profiles at most is somewhat misguided.

Thanks again for your assistance.

[ridgedale]

Hi tanstaafl,
A further update:
It appears the commandline parameter to launch the profile directly should be -profile, not simply -p. Making the change now launches TB without opening the Profile Manager, but simply represents an empty Thunderbird window with no error message. I also tried moving a newly created profile and the defaul-release profile (under version 68.4.1) to the server with exactly the same result from the shell. It also makes no difference if I simply run the straightforward launch command from Terminal:

Code: Select all

/Volumes/<path to>/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin -profile /Volumes/<path to server>/Thunderbird/Profiles/0dg0mbog.default

or

Code: Select all

/Volumes/<path to>/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin -profile /Volumes/<path to server>/Thunderbird/Profiles/nzfbk9nw.default-release

Very frustrating.

[tanstaafl]

"If the whole purpose of the change in TB is to stop users from being able to downgrade, that should have been made absolutely clear on the download page or within the update process to allow the user the opportunity to make an appropriate decision. "

No. Mozilla/Firefox caused the problem, and then the folks making the decisions in the Thunderbird project did a bad job dealing with the changes they inherited in the new version of Gecko.

Sorry about typing -p instead of -profile. My mistake.

See if https://thunderbirdtweaks.blogspot.com/ helps.

Note: I edited the URL to fix a typo that Wayne spotted

[tanstaafl]

"As it stands I can launch any version of Thunderbird up to v.60.9.1 under any Mac operating system up to and including MacOS 10.14.6 (Mojave) and access all the same profiles on the NAS server without any issue. Any later version of Thunderbird appears to only work if the profile is stored locally."

What protocol is being used to connect to the NAS server? SMB? NFS? AFP?
Does the problem occur if you connect to a file share using a different protocol?

[wsmwk]

"If the whole purpose of the change in TB is to stop users from being able to downgrade, that should have been made absolutely clear on the download page or within the update process to allow the user the opportunity to make an appropriate decision. "

No. Mozilla/Firefox caused the problem, and then the folks making the decisions in the Thunderbird project did a bad job dealing with the changes they inherited in the new version of Gecko.

True. But another side to the reporter's question, is the REASON to discourage downgrade, which is some updates cause changes to data structures, and thus subsequent downgrading by a user can cause stability, other bad behavior or dataloss that a) won't be given development effort and b) is difficult for support people to diagnose.

Sorry about typing -p instead of -profile. My mistake.

See if https://thunderbirdtweaks.blogspot.com/helps.

I think you mean https://thunderbirdtweaks.blogspot.com/ ... te-to.html

[tanstaafl]

True. But another side to the reporter's question, is the REASON to discourage downgrade, which is some updates cause changes to data structures, and thus subsequent downgrading by a user can cause stability, other bad behavior or dataloss that a) won't be given development effort and b) is difficult for support people to diagnose.

There is a big difference between downgrading to the prior major version and downgrading to something pretty old. There are exceptions, but most users that downgrade seem to want to go back only as far as necessary to either avoid a major problem, or to get their favorite add-ons to work again. The Thunderbird and Engineering Councils seem to repeatably discount how important their add-ons are to millions of users.

Strongly discouraging downgrades was pushed by Firefox, not Thunderbird! We don't have to embrace everything they do, we can pick and chose based on merits/costs. Since you are a member of the Thunderbird Council I suggest you think about why so many users are no longer willing to use the most recent version since its not easy for most users to downgrade. Its a minority, but we are still talking about a lot of users. For many years you could assume that a upgrade wouldn't cause a serious problem, and if it did it was probably a email provider specific problem that somebody could tell you how to workaround the problem.

My impression is that most "support people" (both here and in the official support forums) are quite willing to support recent old versions. Its versions that are old enough that we don't remember much about their quirks/problems that are an issue, not something as recent as 60.*. I have 60.9.1, 68.4.2 and daily installed. Matt (one of the top contributors in the official support forum) has been pretty vocal about the need to support older versions.

Thunderbird has a community manager. Why doesn't he have public discussions with users about topics like this, perhaps in the official blog? You raise valid points about the potential cost of downgrades. But its not a black & white issue and there needs to be several vocal user advocates to help strike the appropriate balance when either the Thunderbird or the Engineering Council discuss these types of issues.

[wsmwk]

You are correct this is not black and white, and I too have concerns about the add-on relevance. But addons are not involved this user's complaint as far as I can tell - so I declined to add complexity to the description.

The add-on/profile problem is not a Council issue but an engineering and community issue. Feel free to raise a discussion.

[ridgedale]

@ tanstaafl,

Sincere apologies for the long delay in responding. Hope you are keeping safe and well.

What protocol is being used to connect to the NAS server? SMB? NFS? AFP?
Does the problem occur if you connect to a file share using a different protocol?

I have tried all three networking protocols without any success - the same issue rears its head every time.
In addition, I even tried replacing the local Thunderbird folder with a symlink to the NAS server and that made no difference either.
Each new version of Thunderbird to date (68.x.x - 68.7.0) results in the same issue.

In answer to the point about discouraging downgrades, which incidentally I'm not trying to do, it would be much more sensible to flag the issue at the start of either the upgrade or installation of the program rather than crippling the existing functionality of the program. If people don;t read the warning and don't do backups, it's their responsibility, no-one else's.

It's not simply a Catalina issue, because running any 68.x version of Thunderbird under Mojave also fails to access the profiles on the local NAS server.
Interestingly I note that the Thunderbird installer under Windows appears to automatically install the 32-bit version irrespective of whether the 64-bit installer is run. That effectively hides the 64-bit issue from Windows users completely. Is the same true for Thunderbird under Linux?
I find it hard to believe I'm the only person using Thunderbird that uses multiple profiles stored on a local server. As it stands I'm stuck with Thunderbird 60.9.1 with no viable alternative and consequently cannot migrate to macOS Catalina.
There really needs to be a solution to this issue irrespective of the reasons Mozilla have given for the changes implemented for Firefox. Thunderbird is a completely different program and the changes have rendered the program complete unusable in this instance.

Any thoughts and/or suggestions would be welcome as ever.

[tanstaafl]

I just uninstalled the 32-bit version of 68.7.0 and installed the 64 bit windows English US version from https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/. I verified it did install the 64 bit version. It wanted to install the program in "C:\Program Files\Thunderbird 60\" (which is used by my version 60.9.1 installation, that I wanted to keep) until I used custom setup to install it at "C:\Program Files\Thunderbird". I had to use about:profiles in help -> troubleshooting information (which was brought up automatically, after dismissing a warning message) to set the old profile as the default and restart (that profile was created by version 68.0). Basically it worked as expected.

I suggest you download the installer from https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/ in case the main web page downloaded the wrong installer because it mistakenly thought you were running a 32-bit operating system.

My impression is that plenty of people are using profiles stored on a file share. I'd assume you have some sort of configuration specific problem.

Is the file share visible in Finder and/or windows explorer?

Do you have the same problem if you use a -p "complete_path_to_profile" command line argument to specify the location, rather than rely upon profiles.ini?

[ridgedale]

Thanks for your reply once again, tanstaafl.
I'll have to revisit the Windows installation issue as it may be the original installations were 32-bit and running the 64-bit installer simply updates the existing installation as is.

Is the file share visible in Finder

There are no problems with the shares in the Finder (I am using macOS). All shares work fine as expected.

Do you have the same problem if you use a -p "complete_path_to_profile" command line argument to specify the location, rather than rely upon profiles.ini?

I tried that with the existing installation and it made no difference.

What I have now also tried is the following under macOS Catalina 10.15.4:

• Deleted all versions of the Thunderbird application stored under /Applications.
  Ran the following command to launch the profilemanager and set it to not automatically load any profile.
  /Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin -p
  Installed Thunderbird 60.9.1 which launched without an issue.
  Then created three test profiles all located on the NAS server.
  Each of the profiles loaded without any problem and I ran a send and receive message test from one of the profiles for good measure. Everything worked as expected.
  I then quit Thunderbird (still version 60.9.1 at this point).
  I launched Thunderbird and loaded the last used profile from the profilemanager on launch.
  The profile loaded as expected.
  I then selected About Thunderbird from the Thunderbird menu.
  The updater automatically launched giving the option to update to version 68.6.0 which I allowed to proceed.
  Upon completion of the update I restarted Thunderbird.
  The newly updated version of Thunderbird ignored the setting not to automatically load any profile …
  ... and proceeded to automatically load the last used working and tested profile as a blank profile (blank left-and grey panel, blank white main panel).
  I notice that the right-hand panel (Events) attempts to load but disappears before being displayed.

When launched from the Terminal using the above-mentioned command the following error is displayed (in the Terminal) when selecting any of the profiles stored on the NAS:

###!!! [Child][RunMessage] Error: Channel closing: too late to send/recv, messages will be lost.

Just as a further test I copied a copy of Thunderbird 60.9.1 back to the /Applications directory, launched the program with one of the previously working profiles and the profile loaded as normal allowing email to sent and received again.

When under 60.9.1 I check Help > Troubleshooting Information > about:profiles and click on the Show in Finder all the profile directories are displayed without a problem. When I attempt to select Help > Troubleshooting Information under 68.6.0 nothing is displayed at all.

I'd assume you have some sort of configuration specific problem.

If there was an issue with how the system was configured to access the network all programs would almost certainly be affected. No other program has such issues.

My impression is that plenty of people are using profiles stored on a file share. I'd assume you have some sort of configuration specific problem.

When I viewed the original bug thread every one of the users that reported the issue was either a Windows or Linux user. How many of those users are running the 32-bit version of the Thunderbird software to get round the 64-bit issue?

It would be very helpful if one of the developers or support team that actually uses macOS could look into this problem, as from my perspective there does appear to be an issue. If nothing else, it would be helpful if someone could replicate the issue or demonstrate the steps taken to get a working configuration of Thunderbird 68.x.x running under macOS Catalina accessing profiles stored on a local NAS server.

[tanstaafl]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633462

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1538435

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1421405

are with Firefox, but seem like the same channel closing bug. I suggest you see if you can duplicate a channel closing bug with Firefox as it will be much easier to get help for that, and hopefully you can adapt the same workaround for Thunderbird. I assume Thunderbird has the same problem due to Gecko.

In the interim I suggest you stick with TB 60.9.1 (32-bit). Version 76 (next major version) was going to be released in a couple of months, though that might slip due to the pandemic. That should use a different version of Gecko, which might workaround the problem. You could also experiment with a beta build (available at bottom of https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ page), though I suggest you do that with a new profile. It will probably break many of your add-ons.

[ridgedale]

The testing I detailed in my last post was using the version for macOS (64-bit only, if it was 32-bit, it would not launch at all under Catalina). 32-bit versions are only available for Linux and Windows.

To be honest I am loathe to waste any further time messing about with Firefox when there are no problems running that program under macOS Catalina. Aside from anything else there is no need to store any related data on the NAS server for that program.

It looks like I'm not the only one encountering this problem under macOS:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1609050
and there has been no response to the reporter's latest posts three months ago.
Is it possible for this thread to be linked to that bug report in support of the reporter?

I have little choice as it stands other than to stick with version 60.9.1. I'll test version 76.x when it is released.

Thanks again for all your patience and support, tanstaafi.

[WaltS48]

I'll test version 76.x when it is released.

The next release should be 78.0.

Thunderbird Project version numbers generally match up to Mozilla Firefox ESR and beta versions. However, for Thunderbird ONLY ESR and beta match up. (Thunderbird does not release 69, 70, 71, etc) Future ESR releases of Thunderbird upcoming are 78, 88, 98, etc.

REF: Thunderbird Home

You can test Thunderbird 76.0b3 now. 76.0beta Release Notes